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And other teams seem to have decided to fight fire with even more fire. “Red Bull has the same philosophy right now ‘we\u2019ll just spend until we get there,'” he says. The knock-on effect is predictable and punishing for everyone else. “It raises the cost of sponsoring a winning team, you know, a team that can win big things.”<\/p>\n
As expensive as F1 or soccer<\/p>\n
The sums of money involved in the transfers within the upper league right now are quite worrying Vaughters. His team EF Education-EasyPost never belonged to the richest formations in the peloton. Now, the gap is growing even further and Vaughters has to worry that one day, his riders’ agents will simply inform him that a contract has been voided for a sum of money.<\/p>\n
But what really gets Vaughters going in the morning is the severely out-dated financial system of cycling. Right now, the entire model runs on a whim, a decision of a sponsor or two to come together and support a certain team’s project. Then they invest money they are unlikely to ever see return. That’s because race organizers such as ASO monopolize all the profit for themselves.<\/p>\n
“We\u2019re just as expensive as F1. We\u2019re just as expensive as European football, or a lot of American sports,” Vaughters says. In those sports, he argues, sponsorship is not asked to carry the whole structure. “Those sports are operating on a principle that the core revenue is the media rights revenue. And then additionally merchandising and ticket sales. Sponsorship is just a frosting on the cake, right?”<\/p>\n
Cycling is a sinking ship<\/p>\n
Cycling, by contrast, is trying to float without a hull. “We\u2019re trying to float the entire ship on just sponsorship because these other sources of revenue don\u2019t exist,” he says. “We don\u2019t have collective merchandising. The teams do not receive anything from media rights.”<\/p>\n
If that sounds like something that should be fixable, Vaughters does not share the optimism. “That\u2019s tricky because ASO owns essentially all the media rights, or at least the valuable ones,” he says. And this stand-off between teams and the likes of ASO lasts for three decades now.<\/p>\n
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The 2025 Tour de France jersey winners: Jonathan Milan (green), Tadej Pogacar (yellow & polka dot) and Florian Lipowitz (white)<\/p>\n
How to get out of this\u00a0vicious circle?<\/p>\n
Vaughters proposes a solution or two to make cycling more sustainable. The first is creating images for teams that people will be able to relate to. Right now, some teams can change 5+ title sponsors within five season, destroying any sort of identity:<\/p>\n
“Create permanent franchises so that people will invest as opposed to donate and keep the cost a little bit more under control so that cycling is an attractive place that generates value for a sponsor.”<\/p>\n
And then a way to restrict the virtually unlimited financial options of some sponsors, creating an even playing field. “We can call it all kinds of things; salary caps or budget caps,”<\/p>\n
he says.<\/p>\n